Government to amend consumer protection law
Ahead of the World Consumers’ Rights Day, the Ministry of Trade of Belarus drafted amendments to the Law on the Protection of Consumers’ Rights.
The proposed amendments do not mean that the existing law is deficient, says Iryna Barysnikava, the chief of consumers’ protection department at the Ministry of Trade.
“The law has been in effect for four years. Naturally, practice has shown that some provisions were not taken into account. Life goes on, too. We have seen new services emerging, e.g. Internet shops. This requires introducing adjustments into the existing legal framework,” she told the European Radio for Belarus.
During transactions through Internet or by any other distance means, sellers are obliged to provide information about the item on sale, including the description, usage, purchase and delivery terms, price and the date of expiry.
Foodstuffs with expiring dates are currently banned from sale. However, producers and suppliers insist on lifting this ban. They argue that the expired date of a product does not mean that it cannot be used; it has just lost some qualities.
But sellers do not believe it is possible. The Bigzz hypermarket in Minsk said it would continue returning expired products back to their suppliers.
“We return such products to suppliers one day prior to the date of expiry. This is stipulated in our contracts. Possibly, there could be a certain gradation regarding the terms of storage. But half-fresh sturgeon simply does not exist, if we recall Mikhail Bulgakov [Russian literary classic],” Bigzz’s spokesperson told our radio.
Under the proposed draft, warranty service offices should be responsible for the violation of the term of repairs. The draft also proposes that warranty terms of foreign-made goods be the same as for the Belarus-made products.
Currently, only the seller and the producer bear responsibility for the quality of the imported goods. Under the draft, importers, official representatives and dealers are to be responsible for the quality, too.
The amendments also propose that buyers will have to declare the amount of losses in order to claim them, i.e. to present a purchase receipt. Otherwise, it sometimes becomes very difficult to prove that an item was purchased from a certain seller.
The Ministry of Trade hopes that the new law would make the life of consumers easier. The government also says it would simplify their work, too.
“We received around 150 complaints from the citizens to the Ministry of Trade, mostly dealing with recovering the losses associated with low-quality services in installing windows, the purchase of faulty mobile phones. There were a lot of complaints regarding the quality of shoes…
We are pushing for this draft, but it is still unknown if the proposed amendments will become part of the law. We hope, of course, that all of the drafted provisions will be approved, because they are very acute in terms of protecting the rights of consumers,” Iryna Barysnikava said.
We want to believe that the Ministry of Trade is doing the right thing. We also hope that consumers will have an opportunity to study a new law drafted for them.
Photo by http://gov.mari.ru
